Morning Flyte
by May K. Mess
Summary: Harpy lives in the School. When Max and the Flock rescue her, she flies solo for years. When she and the Flock meet again, she joins them. But her reappearance brings trouble. The Flock is on the run, and the School is closer than ever.


**AN- This is my first attempt at FF, so go easy on me. This is the bird girl the Flock saw in the New York branch of the School. Some of this won't be accurate, but this is fiction, so I claim immunity. Reviews help me know what you guys want, so please leave one. If you like this, I'll keep going. If not, tell me, and I'll try something else.**

**James Patterson owns Maximum Ride. I own…give me a minute to think of something….**

Chapter 1

Hey everybody. I'm really glad you're reading this, because it means that you're a little closer to understanding. Yeah, I know that's a huge cliché, and I'm just going to cut the crap and get to my point now.

My name is Harpy. And no, not as in those chicken-ladies from the Percy Jackson books. As in the Harpy Eagle. It's pretty fitting, considering my "condition," but we'll get to that in a bit. So, yeah, my name is Harpy Flyte. I named myself. Why? Because those sadistic rhymes-with-witches who created me didn't give me a name. Only an experiment number. And for some reason, "# 873" didn't have the pleasant ring to it that I wanted. Not that anything in my life really does.

I was born (or created, whichever term you prefer) in a place called the School. And let me tell you, there's some stuff going on there that would make Dr. Frankenstein himself jealous. I swear, I want to punch some kids when I hear them complaining about their schools. One tour through mine, and I can guarantee they would be begging to move into their regular school. The School is a place where evil scientists can conduct their evil experiments, most of which are on people. In fact, many of them are on kids.

I was the result of one of these experiments. My DNA was split, and changed. Now, instead of being 100%, normal, run-of-the-mill human, I am only 98% human. Guess what? _Chimpanzees_ are 98% human. So I can tell you, that other 2% makes more difference than you might think.

I am 2% avian. For those of you who don't know, that's _bird._ All of my body systems are specifically adapted for flight. I mean, I have freakin' _wings._ You just can't get much more adapted than that.

But wings aren't always a good thing. In fact, sometimes they're downright dangerous. Because of my wings, I was kept in the school for experimentation. I was tested and tortured, all for the sake of "science."

And I wasn't the only one to go through it. There were lots of failed experiments to keep me company. Not to mention all of the geeks in lab coats, whom many of us mutants have not-so-affectionately named whitecoats.

Every day, I would be taken to labs, and horrifying tests were performed on me. I was forced to run for hours, so they could test my endurance, speed, and exertion. Blood samples were taken daily. My head was always shaved, so I never knew what color my hair was. And one time, they spent hours prodding me with needles, electric cattle prods, and burning hot metal tools. All of that, just so they could test my pain endurance. Hours of excruciating pain, and through all of my screaming, they didn't even look at me. There was no pity. They just observed and made notes on a clipboard.

I hated them so much it was almost painful. I spent every day thinking of ways to get out, but after a few years, my efforts became half-hearted, and I eventually just stopped trying. Then one night, something happened that made me think about those escape plans again, and fast. I was in my home sweet home- a Kanine Kamper, size large- tucked in for the night. There were a lot of other mutants in dog crates around and on top of mine. There was a curtain pulled in front of us, blocking our view of the rest of the room.

I was lying awake, not really thinking, just letting my mind go blank, when my raptor-enhanced hearing picked up on something on the other side of the curtain. The curtain was thick, so it was muffled, but I thought they sounded like voices. _Young_ voices. But that was impossible. The only young people here were the mutants, and there was no way for them to get out of their cages at night.

But someone was out there. And they definitely weren't whitecoats.

After a few minutes, the voices stopped, and I heard someone taping on a computer keyboard. There was a gasp, and frantic, hushed voices. I could tell that my suspicions were correct. These were definitely kids, not much older than me. The typing continued, and then I could hear footsteps pacing the room. There were more than two or three people in there. I would guess five or six.

One set of footsteps travelled to the other side of the room, and another set crossed over toward our curtain. Dread coursed through me. Would they open the curtain? I desperately wanted to see the kids who had fooled the whitecoats and dodged the security systems. If they had gotten all of them out, couldn't they help me, too? On the other hand, if they opened the curtain, I was a witness. I could be tortured into describing them.

The footsteps came closer, and my breath froze as I saw a corner of the curtain lifted. I thought I saw a flash of dark eyes, but they disappeared too quickly for me to tell if I had seen or imagined them.

Then I heard a soft voice call out, "Max, you're gonna want to see this."

Another set of footsteps hurried to us, and then the curtain was completely pulled away, and I nearly gasped.

Six scraggly kids stood there, gaping at the crates. The oldest looked around 14, a year older than me, but the youngest couldn't have been more than five or six! I don't know how they had kept her quiet, or how she had kept up with them.

The oldest girl there stepped up to the crates with an angry look on her face. She looked inside each one, and every mutant she saw seemed to make her angrier and more pained. She walked down the rows, meeting the eyes of every mutant she could. I immediately admired her for that. She didn't flinch once, not even when she saw the worst cases. Some of the whitecoats couldn't even look straight at some of us without looking a little green around the edges. But she only seemed angry.

When she got to my crate, I met her eyes. I was startled by her appearance. She looked pretty and….strong. Beautiful and dangerous at the same time. She wasn't a good person to have as an enemy, and she knew it. But when we locked eyes, hers travelled around to my wings, and her gaze immediately softened. She stepped back to her group, and spoke to a tall, dark boy.

"Fang, help me undo the locks."

My heart leaped. She was going to free us! I crouched in my cage, ready to burst out as soon as the door was open.

But the boy, Fang, looked doubtful. "Max, you can't free all of these kids."

She looked stubborn. "And why not? I'm supposed to save the world, aren't I? I'm going to start with these kids." And with that she threw open the lock on the nearest crate, gently picking up the young mutant inside and handing him to a small blond boy. She moved down the rows, setting the kids that could walk on the ground, and the ones that couldn't she handed to one of the other kids. She got to my crate and asked, "Can you walk?"

I nodded dumbly.

She helped me out, and I stretch, happy to be able to do more than just curl up into a ball. I started helping her with the remaining crates. I picked up one mutant that seemed to be only a baby.

Max stepped forward and spoke up. "Okay, Flock. We need to get organized and get these people out of here. We're coming back the way we came. Everyone grab one of the little ones, and help the older ones along. Let's move."

And with that, she led our large group to a door. We stepped into a stairwell so narrow, we had to go single-file. It was pitch dark, but my enhanced vision could pick out shapes, enough for me to keep moving.

We made it to the top, and stepped into….a sewer. I was surprised, but this didn't faze Max, or any of her original group for that matter. We walked for a long time, and I knew we had to stop soon. Not many of these kids were in hiking condition. I could already see some of them drooping.

No sooner had I thought that, than an enormous shape stepped out of a side tunnel, right in front of Max. A low, gravelly voice said, "Miss me, Max?"

She automatically went into a fighting stance, and growled, "Not at all, Ari."

**AN- He was always my favorite villain. Yep, we get a good old-fashioned fist fight next chapter. I don't know exactly when I'll post again. I don't think I'll post until I get a review. That way I know which direction I need to take. And if anybody can give me tips as to the best way to operate on this site, drop me a line. It would be much appreciated. **

** -Kelsey**


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